philip_pj wrote:
The 'whatever it takes, whoever did it' line has some resonance with most, but brand names and company reputations count and do matter, and consumers like sincerity and truthfulness - old-fashioned, but there it is. Just ask Lance Armstrong or Tiger Woods. It'd be sad to see Zeiss become the Nike/Hilfiger/Klein of optics.

High end companies produce their best work when they have very high levels of control and ownership...not a lawyerly 'contractual arrangement' no one knows much about. It's like finding your Subaru has a Hyundai engine, and it fuels a race to the bottom, not the top. The market may take a while to notice, but when it does you are just another sellout.

'Zeiss has some secrets that no one else knows about'. Absolutely and always has been true - they are perennial master innovators. They may have to downgrade a design so it can be fabricated by other companies rather than find new ways to get it done right; this of course does little for innovation. Technology trickles down, not up....Show more →

Very well said Sir! To some, the Zeiss brand MEANS something. Those who don't care about Zeiss history or their legacy can happily shoot with a Quantary lens.

Damn right Zeiss has secrets. What lens draws like the 21mm Distagon? Name ONE.

I just shot with 5D III, 2 days, 10 hours each day. MF only. Outside of everything else,
the most annoying thing was the lcd which couldn't be tilted up. What a drag!
I didn't realize how important it was until I was missing it... RX1 does not have that feature...

Sony knew the EVF needed to be improved over the already very good a77, so no surprises there. I guess they see the RX1 as a compact light camera which can do without the acrobatic fitting on the a99/a77.

When you are paring away grams and minimising dimensions, it all counts. I have lost count of the number of people insisting such cameras should by pocketable. Maybe this an issue showing that it's hard to have it both ways, and CZ and Sony went to extraordinary lengths to minimise the depth of the camera, so may not be willing to throw that away for the fancy LCD gyrations.

snowboarder, you know the EVF on the RX1 tilts pretty significantly from flat to quite an angle up, so you look down into it? I expect most users to use the EVF much more than the LCD, certainly the video people like that idea. Perhaps I missed something.

yeah, shooting from the waist is as good or better than using a viewfinder in terms of stabilization and framing. it also is much less obvious for unobtrusive shooting, which is one of the primary reasons many want a small camera. finally, making it flip up LCD still keeps it a lot smaller than attaching the evf does and much more capable than it will be with just the fixed lcd.

edit: oh yeah, and sometimes tilting down is nice too, which the tilt evf can't help with.

I live with a tilt-up EVF / no tilting LCD every day. It isn't ideal, but none of my 135 format film cameras had a tilting viewfinder and certainly none had an instant print preview display on the back! Somehow we all managed. For decades.

But I take the point - once you have the capability it does feel like a step back. While I'd have been happy with a slightly larger RX1 with a tilting LCD and a built-in EVF, I understand and am ok with their decisions to keep it small.

sebboh wrote:
yeah, shooting from the waist is as good or better than using a viewfinder in terms of stabilization and framing. it also is much less obvious for unobtrusive shooting, which is one of the primary reasons many want a small camera.

michaelwatkins wrote:
I live with a tilt-up EVF / no tilting LCD every day. It isn't ideal, but none of my 135 format film cameras had a tilting viewfinder and certainly none had an instant print preview display on the back! Somehow we all managed. For decades.

But I take the point - once you have the capability it does feel like a step back. While I'd have been happy with a slightly larger RX1 with a tilting LCD and a built-in EVF, I understand and am ok with their decisions to keep it small.

Apparently you can't have everything, at least not yet.

yeah, my problem is i know i'll want to leave the evf at home 50% the time and being so used to the flip up lcd, i'm worried not having it will drive me crazy.

Are there any objective measures as to the differences between the 5N/7 EVF and the 6/A99/RX1 EVF?

Vivek does have a rather negative approach to a lot of things Sony does.
Funny because there is a high ranking employee at Sony Australia named Vivek
The response is better as is the behaviour with highly gained up subjects (low light).

sebboh wrote:
edit: oh yeah, and sometimes tilting down is nice too, which the tilt evf can't help with.
[...]
yeah, my problem is i know i'll want to leave the evf at home 50% the time and being so used to the flip up lcd, i'm worried not having it will drive me crazy.

Unfortunately you're 100% right
I had to cover a range of different angles with 5D III, including the ground level (literally my camera on the ground)
and holding it as high above my head as possible. Not enough room and time for any ladder setup.
I was shooting in live view mode to be able to see at least something and it was a huge PITA.
2nd thing I was constantly doing was touching the screen to magnify a selected detail. Geez,
simple things, while you get used to them, they are really useful. Anyway, I can live without the touch screen,
but the tilting lcd is a must. Which unfortunately creates another question - what about the new M?